My PC turns off while playing games

Rory Mc A

Posts: 13   +0
I recently built my first pc as I had money lying around during the lockdown but I immediatly started having issues with it fully turning off when playing games although the crashes happen much quicker on “harder to run” titles like apex legends and I’m yet to have it crash playing minecraft. All my fans appear to be running fine and temperatures never get higher than 50 Celsius on the graphics card or cpu. all parts are brand new. When the pc turns off I also have to manually turn off the power supply and then turn it back on before pc loads. I’ve ran some tests and it crashes while running gpu intensive tasks I can’t take it in to get fixed atm with the corona going about so litterally any help woudl be unreal
 
First thing first: the exact brand/model/quantity/etc that you have for the CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics card, and power supply unit.
 
Cpu: Ryzen 5 3600
Gpu: NVIDIA GeForce Gtx 1660 super
Mother board : MSI B450 gaming plus max
Psu: Corsair VS 550
Ram: 2 8Gb Corsair vengeance
And memory is a barracuda 1tb and a WD 512gb m.2 stick
 
Does the graphics card have the 6+2 pin PCIe connector, from the PSU, firmly pushed in?
 
Okay, so the next step is to narrow down to the source of the issue. One way of doing this is using OCCT and running the Linpak, GPU, GPU memory, and Power tests separately:


The Linkpak test will heavily load up the CPU (and draw a fair bit of power from the PSU) too. Although your testing suggests that it's not a CPU and/or motherboard issue, it's best to double check. The GPU test will just test the graphics chip, but again, it will load up the PSU too. The GPU memory test won't hit the GPU very much, but will check out the VRAM on the card.

The Power test loads up absolutely everything to pull as much current as possible out of the PSU. Of course, if the PC fails during the GPU test, it will do so in the Power test so you could skip this one.

Are all the parts new? Were any 2nd hand?
 
Try the GPU memory test first - it will cause the graphics card to draw around 30% of its full power capacity, so it will give an indication as to where the issue lies.
 
This would strongly suggest that the graphics card is unstable, as the GPU memory test shouldn't be drawing enough power to upset the PSU. Minecraft just don't stress the GPU and its memory, which is why it's been fine in that game.
 
Yeah that makes a lot of sense and acc wait no I ran the actual gpu test not the memory that’s my fault read that wrong
It crashed on actual gpu test the memory one is workings just fine my apologied
 
This still suggests that it's the graphics card that's the problem, but we need to remove the PSU from the picture. You can open up multiple instances of OCCT and run Linpak in one and the GPU memory in the other, in order to draw more current out of the PSU (but without pushing the graphics processor).
 
How many instances were you using? Was it 1x Linpak and 1x GPU memory, or more/less than this?
 
Interesting. This would suggest that it is the PSU that's the problem, as the Linpak + GPU memory test won't be stressing the graphics chip, and will only be pulling a total power of around 100W, at most - make it 120W to be conservative.

Although it's a 550W PSU, the VS550 is at the bottom end of Corsair's PSU range, and older versions of it didn't have a great reputation.

Either way, it's either the PSU or the graphics card that's at fault here, and I'd be tempted towards returning the PSU under warranty.
 
Thanks man I was thinking of returning the graphics card before this happened but swapping the psu first is a lot easier. Any psu u would recommend?
 
Not all Corsair PSUs are weak: their RM550 is okay, but the CX and AX models are a lot better. However, they're also a more expensive (the AX models are very dear). SeaSonic's Prime and Prime Ultra ranges are good too, but they're pricey with it.
 
It's okay - not great, not bad - but for that price, I'd be more tempted to go for the Cooler Master MWE Gold or Seasonic Focus Gold Plus. They're probably both a little more expensive than the CX550M, but they're better quality than the Corsair.
 
A really great source to judge many different PSUs is JohnnyGuru. They do some amazingly comprehensive tests.

Quality can be all over the map with some brands, you really have to research. I'll 2nd a nod to SeaSonic though. Hard to go wrong with them.

Anecdotal: my Corsair CX750M only lasted 38 months. Just beyond warranty.
My Corsair AX760 is still fantastic (4 + years now). It's built by SeaSonic though, and is high end, so no surprise.
 
Thanks man I was thinking of returning the graphics card before this happened but swapping the psu first is a lot easier. Any psu u would recommend?
Antec's "Earthwatts" series is decent as well. At one time you could buy them for a song, but they don't seem to go on sale any more. They were built by Seasonic, but the moderls with "D" after the wattage are built by Delta, which is just as good.

What you don't seems to have tried yet is running the system with the Ryzen's APU. So, yank the card and see if you can trip the system off with the integrated graphics.

Since the 1660 will probably top out at about 100 watts, this test would be far from conclusive. But, if it still cuts off on the IGP, it would be the PSU for certain.
 
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